


Bad Influence;

by tmntransformer



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood Friends AU, M/M, tanaka & yamamoto cousin au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7957684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tmntransformer/pseuds/tmntransformer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Yamamoto ever meets Ennoshita he already knows the four most important things about him:<br/>One: he lives in the same road as Nishinoya. <br/>Two: his height is exactly halfway between Tanaka and Nishinoya’s. <br/>Three: his favourite flavour ice cream is vanilla.<br/>And four: he is the bravest person Tanaka and Nishinoya have ever met. </p>
<p>At least those are the things Tanaka and Nishinoya insist are the most important things about him. </p>
<p>If it weren’t for number four Yamamoto would find this Ennoshita person boring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: *already has WIPs*  
> me: *starts another multi-ch. fic*
> 
> i'm sorry, i'm a very weak individual  
> ＿ﾉ乙(､ﾝ､)_

Before Yamamoto ever meets Ennoshita he already knows the four most important things about him. One: he lives in the same road as Nishinoya. Two: his height is _exactly_ halfway between Tanaka and Nishinoya’s. Three: his favourite flavour ice cream is vanilla. And four: he is the bravest person Tanaka and Nishinoya have ever met. At least those are the things Tanaka and Nishinoya insist are the most important things about him. If it weren’t for number four Yamamoto would find this Ennoshita person boring.

“And he doesn’t like volleyball?” Yamamoto still fails to see how that’s not a most important thing.

“He _likes_ it!” Nishinoya insists, licking from his wrist up to his palm where his blue ice lolly has melted down his hand. “He just doesn’t _love_ it!” Yamamoto frowns. It is deeply concerning to him that Tanaka and Nishinoya have decided to befriend someone who is obviously a bad influence.

“Oh!” Tanaka points his finger dramatically to the sky. “It’s more important that he plays it for us even though it’s _not_ his favourite, don’cha think?”

“I guess.” Yamamoto thinks he probably plays volleyball with them in the hope that he’ll be able to distract them away from it. Or maybe he wants their cool personalities to rub off on him. What kind of person likes vanilla ice cream the most? No kind of person Yamamoto’s ever met.

Ennoshita’s house is the last one on the left at the end of Nishinoya’s road. It’s smaller than most of the other houses and it doesn’t have an upstairs. The paintwork on the outside looks like it’s been retouched recently up until a point, fading into a dull white on one end. Tanaka and Nishinoya don’t knock on the door, strolling casually around the side of the house and into the back garden as if they’ve been friends with this Ennoshita for years, when four months ago they didn’t know he existed. Maybe even less than that. All Yamamoto knows for certain is that when he visited Miyagi for spring vacation there was no Ennoshita and now it's suddenly impossible for the three of them to play volleyball without him.

The garden is big. Bigger than the tiny shared patch of green Yamamoto has back in Tokyo but also bigger than Ennoshita’s entire house. In seemingly random spaces vegetable plots are dotted around. None of the vegetables look familiar or edible to Yamamoto but he supposes country people are different. And Tanaka and Nishinoya _did_ say Ennoshita was the bravest person they knew; maybe he only eats inedible food stuffs. Where the garden is not ordered into vegetable growing space it has been left to florish into disarray. The grass comes up to Yamamoto’s knees in places and his foot gets caught in a weed every other step forwards. It’s not bad. In fact it’s kind of fun. Yamamoto could see why playing around Ennoshita’s house would be good; they could all pretend to be jungle explorers.    

“Granny!” Nishinoya yells into the sky. He wades further into the garden and squints at a handful of patches meaningfully. “Granny!” Closer to the back fence of the garden, in a patch shaded by a tree, a head emerges. A short, plumpish woman with a round face and a big straw hat. She is exactly the kind of person Yamamoto’s mum has told him to run to if he’s ever alone and in trouble; she has one of those kinds of faces. Her smile grows wider and wider as she gets closer to them.

“Ah! Mr. Nishinoya-san.” She reaches out to pet Nishinoya’s hair. “And Mr. Tanaka-san.” To Yamamoto’s surprise Tanaka jumps forwards so she can pet him too. “Oh? And this must be Mr Yamamoto-san!” Yamamoto can feel his face flush red so scowls in the hope that no one will point it out to him; nobody has ever addressed him as ‘san’ before. Tanaka’s laugh bursts out of him.

“You remembered!”

“Of course.” The lady tweaks Tanaka’s left ear lobe gently. “The famous Tokyo cousin, how could I forget?” Yamamoto gets the impression that it’s Tanaka who is being teased and not himself.

“Nice to meet you.” He grumbles, bowing slightly because he knows Tanaka will tell on him later if he doesn’t.

“Granny, Chikara’s not helping you today?” Nishinoya looks around the garden more thoroughly. It’s possible there’s a boy hiding in the long grass. Yamamoto looks around a little too.

“He’s just popped inside to bring us out something cool to drink. You can go fetch him if you like.” She chuckles warmly as Tanaka rockets off towards the back door of the house, Nishinoya hot on his trails. “You can go too.” She nods encouragingly at Yamamoto and waves him off with a hand. Yamamoto nods, unsure if he should stop scowling yet, and runs to catch up to the other two. He follows the sounds of giggling and finds Tanaka and Nishinoya piled on top of a boy on the kitchen floor.

“Ennoshita?” Yamamoto isn’t sure what he expected, but the neat hairdo and honest face cause him to pause. Not the regular markings of a bad influence. And yet his legs are decorated liberally in plasters, a bandage wrapped tightly around one knee. His right arm is in some kind of a brace and his left one has several deep bruises and one long scratch. There are plasters on his face too, one bridging across his nose and three around his jaw and right cheek. There are a few scratches along his forehead and fading bruises on his ear trailing down his neck. He has big, brown eyes. Blinking at Yamamoto in exactly the way Yamamoto’s blinking at them.

“Yamamoto?” He echoes back and Tanaka and Nishinoya giggle in unison.

“Your favourite ice cream flavour is vanilla.” Yamamoto hopes he inflicts enough disgust into his voice to indicate how distasteful he finds that. His mum tells him he has a naturally grumpy voice anyway, so maybe even if he failed Ennoshita will understand. Ennoshita raises an eyebrow easily; almost like he _knows_ Yamamoto has been trying to learn how to do that all year.

“You’re a fish boy born on cat day.” Yamamoto hums thoughtfully. His cousin Saeko has been obsessed with star signs for as long as he can remember. The last couple of years Akane has started reading his out to him every morning over breakfast and so he’s not sure if it’s a girl thing or if Akane just wants to be like Saeko but either way he understands that Ennoshita is referring to him being a Pisces born on national cat day.

“Anyone born on cat day would be a Pisces.” Saeko had found it really funny when she’d first figured out all their signs, but it’s not like there is more than one cat day a year so it’s always going to be in the fish month. Yamamoto rolls his eyes as if it’s obvious and Ennoshita should feel like kind of an idiot for not realising sooner.

“Vanilla’s good because you can add anything you like to it and it works.” Yamamoto thinks the same can be said of every ice cream flavour – one time he and Akane mixed rice into their ice cream and it was so good it’s now their Sibling Speciality for when one of them is feeling sad – and he opens his mouth to inform this Ennoshita that strawberries taste better with chocolate ice cream, not vanilla, but Ennoshita beats him to it, voice soft. “No one ever wants vanilla.”

“What?”

“It means I can have as much as I want.” Yamamoto thinks that isn’t what Ennoshita was going to say at all; the way he’s chewing on the inside of his lip screams that that’s a fake answer. But maybe not in a bad way. It doesn’t feel like in a bad way. It feels like maybe Ennoshita likes vanilla ice cream for a secret, like maybe he has his own Sibling Speciality with someone, and that’s okay. That’s good even. He smiles.

“Vanilla is the cheapest too!” 

"I knew you'd be best friends!" Tanaka screeches out excitedly, grabbing onto Yamamoto’s wrist and tugging him to fall on top of them on the floor.

“It’s _impossible_ they wouldn’t have been!” Nishinoya’s equally as excited though, little fingers scrambling up Yamamoto’s back. “We only pick the coolest people to be our best friends. It only makes sense.” Yamamoto can feel his face heating up again, probably from being squished so closely to each other on a hot day, but maybe a little from being called cool by the coolest people he knows. It’s a bit confusing. He’s just average compared to Tanaka and Nishinoya. He coughs as an excuse to hide his face with his hand and his eyes fall to meet Ennoshita’s. Up this close he can see the ghost marks of where he had butterfly stitches at the end of his right eyebrow.

“Best friends?” Ennoshita sounds winded, as if he didn’t even realise he had any friends at all, let alone _best_ ones.

“ _Best_ best friends!” Insists Tanaka, squirming so that he’s flopped on top of all of them and snorting laughs right down Yamamoto’s ear.

“Oh.” It’s odd, Yamamoto decides, because if it were literally anyone else he’d be yelling about how red Ennoshita’s face is burning right now. It wouldn’t matter if they’d call out his red face in return because then he’d just poke their belly until they doubled over and he could get them into a headlock. But he doesn’t feel like pointing out Ennoshita’s red face. He kind of doesn’t want anyone else to notice at all. It’s very odd. Yamamoto wonders if he should be troubled by it, it’s not like he’s felt like this before, but then he remembers why they’d come to Ennoshita’s in the first place.

“Can we play volleyball now?”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to milkybar-chan who as always cheerleadered me on;
> 
>  


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp, so i am currently without a laptop in my life, but the need to update this was unignorable & so i've written this on my phone... (/ w \\) the levels i go to for ennomoto, honestly.

Unsurprisingly, Ennoshita is awful at volleyball. Worse even than Akane and that's really saying something because Yamamoto's honestly lost count of the number of times she's simply slapped the ball away from her face in terror instead of trying to hit it meaningfully. He forgives her though, because she's his only sister and it's kind of cute that she always tries to help him even though she's terrified.

Ennoshita is not terrified. At least not in any recognisable way to Yamamoto and he's seen his fair share of terrified faces - it's not as if they ever  _mean_ for anything to get out of hand, but well, when he, Tanaka and Nishinoya get together there's always at least one terrified person at the end of the day.

If anything, to Yamamoto, it almost looks like Ennoshita is trying to be at least half-decent. Which only makes his utter uselessness all the more pitiful. He forgives his wonky serves and shoddy setting on account of the brace around his right arm. And he supposes diving to receive the ball might be a little painful for whatever that bandage on his knee is covering up. But still. Ennoshita is slow. Slower than any person Yamamoto's ever seen as he tries time and time again to get wherever it is Tanaka's demanding him to be. He never makes it. And weirder still, Tanaka never seems to care. Not even a little bit.

"Yes!" Nishinoya crows next to him, exploding onto the other side of their make-shift court to dig his knuckles lovingly into the top of Ennoshita's head. "You almost made that one!" Ennoshita smiles, using his good arm to push Nishinoya away. It's a small smile, but it's the first one Yamamoto's seen him wear since they started playing.

"He'll get the next one for sure!" Tanaka screeches, thumping Ennoshita across the back harder than is strictly neccessary. Yamamoto winces; he's been on the receiving end of Tanaka's congratulatory thumps one too many times.

"Today's the day!" Nishinoya announces as he scuttles back to their side of the court, smile stretching impossibly across his face.

"The day for what?" Whilst they were busy yelling Yamamoto took it upon himself to fetch the ball. He bounces it once on the ground like he's seen the professionals do on T.V., but he's still kind of unsure if it does anything except look cool. Nishinoya waits for him to look at his face before continuing.

"The day Chikara receives his first ball!  _Duh!_ " He pokes his tongue out.

"He's  _never_ received the ball before?" That has to be a new record of awful surely. On the way to the park Tanaka had told him they'd been training Ennoshita for nearly two months already, chest puffing out with absolute pride at how he'd eventually caved; they're amazingly convincing.  _Pestering_ , Ennoshita had mumbled, laughing brightly when Nishinoya gasped dramatically in shock and Tanaka flicked him in the forehead.

"Not yet", Nishinoya shrugs as if it's no big deal, "but he will do. Today's the day! I can feel it!" Yamamoto can't feel anything except for the lazy trails the sweat on the back of his neck is mapping out as it glides down his shirt. He watches Ennoshita as he wipes his bad arm across his sweaty forehead. He's sweating more than the rest of them. He looks the most serious too. He bends his knees slightly, bracing himself, and maybe because it's the first time Yamamoto's ever watched him like this he notices the slight wince he makes when his bandaged knee bends.

Yamamoto opens his mouth to call out and ask Ennoshita why he's even playing. He's clearly not enjoying himself, he's in pain and he's so awful that it's sort of making Yamamoto ache just to look at him. But then Tanaka's answer echoes back to him -  _it's more important that he plays it for us even though it's not his favourite, don'cha think?_ \- and he watches Ennoshita's eyes flick to both Tanaka and Nishinoya, a fond look falling over his face. He's playing for his friends.

"Oi, Vanilla boy!" Yamamoto screams, holding the ball high above his head with one hand and pointing a challenge at Ennoshita with the other. "This one's for you!" Ennoshita nods, teeth nibbling on his bottom lip as his eyebrows furrow in concentration. Yamamoto steps back, bouncing the ball one more time for added coolness, and throws it up. He doesn't go easy on Ennoshita because he knows he wouldn't want him to, and he knows he's not been trying so hard for someone to just give him what he wants.

The ball flies from his wrist, probably way closer to Tanaka than to Ennoshita, but Tanaka doesn't make a move, cheering Ennoshita on as he dashes across the court. Still slow. Slower than anyone Yamamoto's ever seen. But there's a spark in his eyes that makes Yamamoto believe that he can do it. He finds himself squeezing Nishinoya's hand, both of them yelling nonsense.

Ennoshita's fingertips graze the ball before it bounces just out of his reach, but from the delighted smile that blooms across his face and the way he springs back up off the floor without even wincing, demanding that Yamamoto throw for him again, you'd think he had made it.

He doesn't make the next 73 serves Yamamoto sends him either. But he works his way up to the first knuckle and that's a good achievement for one day if Yamamoto's ever seen one.

* * *

When the sun sets they drag themselves back to Granny's for dinner. It's neither the closest house nor the biggest but Ennoshita's fingers twitch in his t-shirt when he says he thinks she'll enjoy the company and the three of them couldn't say no even if they wanted to.

"Hmm," Granny smiles down at the four of them, hand on her hip and laughter in her eyes. "No food until you've bathed."

And that's how Yamamoto finds himself squashed next to Ennoshita around their small table, dressed in a clean pair of Ennoshita's pyjamas and listening to Tanaka and Nishinoya scream about who can hold their breath for the longest. He'd shared his bath with Ennoshita. Spread across Ennoshita's bare back and tickling along his ribs were more bruises than Yamamoto could count. He'd pinched Ennoshita under his good arm and splashed him in the face until the strange feeling brewing in his gut was chased away by Ennoshita's laughter.

"Do you like playing volleyball?" Yamamoto stares at Ennoshita, mouth opening and closing uselessly until Ennoshita laughs at him, not unkindly. "I don't speak fish!"

"Of course! I love volleyball!" It's weird how Yamamoto had been wanting to ask Ennoshita the same question all day long and now finds himself on the receiving end of it.

"What do you like about volleyball?" Yamamoto frowns. This is much too serious a question for post-bath time warmth, especially when his belly is making weird gurgling sounds.

"It's fun! And exciting!" Ennoshita blinks at him. "When you practice all day every day and suddenly you can do things you didn't think you'd be able to... it's really cool." A soft smile starts to unravel at the corner of Ennoshita's mouth. "And it's the best thing to do with friends!"

Yamamoto can't actually remember who out of him and Tanaka first fell in love with volleyball. He's sure it was Tanaka who opened his door one summer with a volleyball tucked under his arm and unrestrained excitement painted across his face, but Tanaka swears it was Yamamoto who showed up on his doorstep with one a few winters ago. It's even possible that it was Nishinoya who dragged them both off to the park and shoved a volleyball at them. Either way, ever since the first time Yamamoto spiked a ball over the net he's been hooked. He didn't know all the rules back then, had never watched a game. Just the sting on his palm and the smacking sound of the ball on the court felt right. It's hard to explain that to Ennoshita; if he hasn't already felt it maybe he never will.

"Is it a great thing to do even if you suck at it?" Ennoshita's eyes fall to the table where he sets about picking at the edge determindly. Yamamoto feels a slither of guilt because more than once today Ennoshita played so awfully that he wanted to spike the ball into his face and tell him to give up already. That was before he had really been watching though.

"Sure you suck _now_ ," Yamamoto prods at his belly, careful to poke at an area that isn't decorated with bruises, "but that's just 'cause you're new!" Ennoshita's eyes flicker to Yamamoto's briefly before sliding back to the tabletop. "You can't just  _be_ awesome all at once!" Unless you're Tanaka and Nishinoya, which, now that Yamamoto really thinks about it, could be why Ennoshita is feeling a bit useless; he too feels overwhelmed by how cool his friends are on an almost daily basis. "You just have to practice!" Ennoshita looks up at Yamamoto slowly, eyes narrowed.

"You're not as horrible as you look." He decides, nodding like this has been something he's been debating all day in his head.

"Yeah well you're not as annoying as you look!" Ennoshita beams, smile so big and face so close that for the first time Yamamoto notices that he's missing two of his back teeth.

"Thanks." Yamamoto pinches his nose, mostly because he doesn't know how he's supposed to answer back to that. Ennoshita yelps so loudly that Nishinoya kicks his way into the room, still dripping wet from his bath, wearing his towel like a cape, and tackles Yamamoto from behind.

"Don't worry Chikara! I'll always come to your rescue!"

"Put some clothes on first." Nishinoya pauses, Yamamoto's head trapped in the crook of his elbow with his leg hooked over his side so that his heel can dig painfully into the soft bit of his belly.

"Wow Chikara. I come  _flying_ to rescue you and all you say is  _put some clothes on first_? Wow." Yamamoto tuts as best as he can from his strangled position. Ennoshita stares at them.

"Granny won't feed you if you're naked. That's rule number one." It sounds to Yamamoto like Ennoshita speaks from experience, and from the defeated groan Nishinoya makes before he scuttles off back to the bathroom, he believes so too.

When Tanaka and Nishinoya have wrestled their way into their own pair of Ennoshita's pyjamas Granny serves up huge bowls of Udon, ruffling Ennoshita's hair as she tells them there's plenty more. Yamamoto eats three bowlfuls, mostly to annoy Nishinoya who couldn't even finish his second bowl, but also because it's the best Udon he's ever had in his life.

They lay flopped together in the living room afterwards, piled under more blankets than Yamamoto thinks his whole family own, because Ennoshita says it's the biggest room in the house and Tanaka says blanket forts are the most fun anyway. Which is true. Nishinoya falls asleep first like always, his leg twitching into Tanaka's shin every so often, but Ennoshita isn't far behind him, curled up into a tiny ball and snoring softly.

"Ney, Ryuu?" Tanaka rolls over to blink at Yamamoto in the dark.

"Yeah?" 

"Is it just Ennoshita and Granny?" 

"Yeah."

"Oh." Yamamoto wants to ask why, but if Tanaka wanted to tell him he would have done. It's probably not his secret to share. "Ryuu?"

"Yeah?"

"Why does he have so many bruises?" When they were first learning to walk and would topple over everything and bump into everything else, Tanaka and Yamamoto - according to their mothers - used to tell everyone they collected bruises. Wore their yellows and greens and purples with pride. Only Ennoshita has taken his collection to a level previously unimagined to Yamamoto.

"Tora." Tanaka reaches out to drag himself closer to Yamamoto. He's using his Important voice so Yamamoto nods seriously. "Chikara is the bravest person in the world."

"Oh." Tanaka nods before sliding his eyes closed and leaving Yamamoto with more questions than he can remember ever having before.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading~!


End file.
